Ad Churning and Irrelevant Site Wake Up Call

I don't accept it as a certainty. I do accept it as a possibility.

This reminds me of the reciprocal/non-reciprocal linking debate -- a lot of hysteria based on speculation about something that may or may not happen in the future.

 

Minstrel makes a point that deserves further examination.

In devising a method that devalues advertising links, I think is courting the possibility of serving less relevant results. Relevancy, not link age, should be the primary consideration.

If I'm spending time and money building links to sell my widgets, I'm doing so because I have widgets to sell. That makes those links relevant regardless of how 'old' they are.

If anything, the argument could be made that advertising links are MORE relevant because someone has specifically targeted them. But what we as consumers see when we type in 'widget' is not necessarily the store that sells the widget, but the umpteen affiliates that will send you to the store that sells the widget. As an affiliate marketer, I say 'so what?'. The consumer can still buy the widget without paying an increased cost, so my link, and my site, is relevant.

By devaluing newer links and sites, I think Google is going to hurt itself in the long run. When a brand new widget model comes out, how, other than AdWords, can a site drive organic traffic from a link advertising that new widget? Or will a new site selling that new widget rank well?

Google is going to turn itself into a research search engine. Consumers will use MSN and Yahoo, because when someone puts a 'New Widgets Here' link in the co-op it will be in MSN in a week and in Yahoo in a month or less.

Google seems to have changed it focus. It focus should be 'serve relevant results'. For the last few years their focus seems to be 'limit ways to influence ranking'. The two are not necessarily compatible.

 

i agree 100% ... unfortunetly, they don't care what we think and old habits die hard ... getting people to switch to more relevant results by using other engines isn't easy to do.

 

Could be throwing out the baby with the bath water with some of the changes I see suggested here. I wouldn't focus so much on how the Ad Coop helps (or doesn't) with Google. In my experience, there are several ways the Ad Coop is helping my sites above what it helps with Google. For example, it helps far more with MSN than with Google. It also helps in Yahoo, and with direct clicks. Not to discount Google, but focusing entirely on how the Ad Coop works with Google is a losing strategy, IMO.

 

Yeah, that debate has slowed down

For awhile, reciprical links were dead, they would get you penalized, they didn't count, if you traded with the wrong people, the internet police ould come take you in the night etc

Now they are accepted as almost standard promotion technique

Althought there are still a lot of link dealers, and seos that will say otherwise.

 

That's because ultimately it was based on sheer hysteria and it never made any sense.

If Symantec links to Adobe for the Acrobat Reader download for one of its internet security papers and Adobe links back to Symantec for one of its articles on security, Google bans both of them for reciprocal linking on the basis that it artifically inflates PR.

There is a lot of reciprocal linking that occurs naturally/organically and makes perfect sense without having anything to do with PR building.

 

minstrel, minstrel, minstrel.....thinking LOGIC has anything to do with rumors and hysteria

 

You're right again, as always, Wendy.

When is that Wendy Junior coming?

 

due date is may 3rd...i'm hoping earlier though lol

 

First child... could well be. They'll be no stopping you then -- the two of you will be tag-teaming us here in no time

 

...The simple solution to this would be to put rel=no follow on all the sites hosting ads. This won't effect the usefulness of the coop as an *advertising network*, but it will put a stop to anyone worried about 'link churn' or should i say 'ad churn'
No takers? didn't think so..

 

why bother? the google patent did not talk about penalizing for the 'link churn' effect, just discounting links, so why add the extra nonsense?

 

hmm ok so I must be reading the Google Patent wronge then:

and this:

 

When i'm more awake i'll pull up the reference I was thinking of, where they discussed discounting and not penalizing. i could be wrong, won't be the first time.

in the meantime, it's really a moot point as the suggestion has been made many times and a decision has already been reached.

 

The "penalty" they are talking about is what we have been calling devaluation. Not to mention there are many reasons to file a patent (this particular one wasn't actually file by Google themselves), already using them being the smallest.

Look at the language - penalization vs. boost - that is the basis for serps and removing on page factors, for example, would result in a "penalization of your ranking" not a "penalization of your site"

Those are two totally different things

Noone is "scared" by the fact that "churning" links may not count as much as permanent ones. In fact I'm fine with that.

 

I think there is a common sense issue here as well. If sites were going to get seriously penalized for other sites not linking to them on a permenant basis, then all a competitor would have to do is develop their own script to randomly link to competitors in order to hurt their ranking.

That simply isn't going to be allowed to happen. You cannot control who links to you.

 

But then the coop would still work, you just have to link to your competitors instead of yourself

 

hey i was able to make it so my ads were semi-static/permanent, is this allowed? i can't see anything explicitly against it in the terms of service.

 

You are not allowed to change the code at all.

 

oh okay, so acheiving the same thing without changing the code would be fine?